PARADISE LOST

By MIKE SAGERAugust 23, 1987

KILI IS 200 ACRES OF CORAL AND SAND AND COCONUT TREES in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The sun is hot, the waves are 30 feet high. There's a swamp on the island, a plywood village, a few pigs, many brown rats, a rutted road, 20 Toyota Corollas, all of them new and loaded with extras -- air conditioning, automatic transmission, AM/FM stereo cassette.

There is no such thing as a Kilian. The people who live on Kili are Bikinians. Bikini is 500 miles away, clear on the other side of the Marshall Islands. Bikini is an atoll, a group of 26 islands nestled in a calm, blue lagoon, 240 square miles, protected all around by a coral reef. In the Bikinian language, it is called Blessed Bikini. It is nothing like Kili.

The Bikinians are one small clan among 30,000 Marshallese who inhabit islands spread across 4,500 square miles of the South Pacific. They lived in relative isolation on their atoll for centuries, visited only by missionaries and a few traders. Other Marshallese, from different islands, regarded them as a backward people, country cousins, and the Bikinians, over the centuries, came to regard themselves this way as well. Even today, after all their relocations to different islands in the Marshalls, after all their visits to Japan and Hawaii and Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., the Bikinians are still very bashful. When they make speeches at village meetings, the speaker averts his eyes to the ground while he talks, and no one looks at him.

The Bikinians' first prolonged contact with outsiders came during World War II, when five Japanese soldiers were posted on Bikini. The soldiers watched the ocean from a tall tower, enforced a curfew, discouraged worship, made a few babies. Generally, they were mean. The Bikinians were afraid of them. Then, near the end of the war, an American ship arrived in the lagoon. It was many times the size of the Bikinians' largest sailing canoe, bigger even than the Japanese ships. The Americans came ashore and gave the Bikinians a note to take to the Japanese. The Japanese soldiers read the note, huddled themselves into a bunker, pulled the pin on a hand grenade.

A little more than a year later, after church on a Sunday in February 1946, a U.S. Navy commodore came to the Bikinians and told them America needed their atoll. He compared the Bikinians to the children of Israel, whom the Lord had led to the Promised Land. He described the power of the atomic bomb and "the destruction it had wrought upon the enemy." He said that the Navy had searched the world for a place to test the new weapon, a weapon to end all wars, and Bikini had been chosen.

"Would you be willing to sacrifice your island for the welfare of all men?" asked Commodore Ben Wyatt, USN, newly appointed commissioner of the Pacific Trust Territories, which were seized from Japan during the war and later entrusted to the United States by United Nations charter.

The Bikinians chewed on the idea and some Spam brought by the commodore. They looked at the warship anchored in the lagoon. They remembered the Japanese, the hand grenade. Chief Juda spoke:

"If the United States government and the scientists of the world want to use our island and atoll for furthering development, which with God's blessing will result in kindness and benefit to all mankind, my people will be pleased to go elsewhere."

And so it was that they packed everything they owned into woven baskets and surplus oil drums. Sleeping mats, fishing spears, tools for grating coconut, pandanus leaves for weaving new huts, pieces of coral upon which their ancestors had walked. They didn't have much. They didn't need much. Life was simple then. To get food on Bikini, all you had to do was float with your head beneath the gentle water 10 feet off the sandy shore and spear a fish.

All 161 Bikinians were loaded onto a Navy LST. To their surprise, their church was loaded, too, in many pieces. They sang a song of farewell. They didn't know when or if they'd come back. The Americans had told them their island might turn to glass. They didn't use the word "glass," because the Bikinians didn't have such a word. They said bottles. After the blast, they said, Bikini might turn into bottles.

As they left, cameras rolled, flashbulbs popped. The New York Times summed up the move: "Primitive they are, but they love one another and the American visitors who took their home."

Five months later, on July 1, 1946, a B-29 bomber nicknamed Dave's Dream flew over Bikini at a speed of 300 miles per hour. Ninety-three Navy target ships were anchored in the lagoon. All was quiet. At 09:00:34, Alpha was detonated 500 feet above the water.

Over the next 12 years, the United States would detonate 22 more nuclear bombs at Bikini. The largest was Bravo, in 1954. At 15 megatons, Bravo was 1,000 times more powerful than the atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The combined power of all the weapons fired in all the wars in all of history falls short

text continued on page 19 continued from page 14 of the destructive power released over Bikini in that one moment. The blast vaporized one island, ripped a mile-wide hole in the reef, sent a 17-mile-high mushroom cloud into the heavens. To this day, the effects of Bravo linger. Experts say that if it hadn't been for Bravo, the Bikinians might well be home.

In the 41 years since the first nuclear test, the Bikinians have been moved to three different islands in the Marshalls -- Rongerik, Kwajalein and Kili. The Bikinians have been starved and feted, settled and resettled, scrutinized and forgotten. Their culture has eroded, their sailing canoes are gone. Cash has replaced gathering as their principal means of survival. They have been scattered across the waters, 700 of them here and there around the Marshalls, 600 of them on Kili, a scab of flatland 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii, 4 degrees north of the Equator.

Today, the Bikinians have more than $20 million in trust funds established by the U.S. government. They like the money. They'd rather be on Bikini.

At the moment, they're trying to persuade the U.S. government to clean up Bikini. When the Bikinians left their atoll, they were never told when they could go back: They were simply promised the return of their land after the Americans were done testing the weapons to end all wars. In the Bikinian culture, land has always been considered the prime resource. For centuries, authority over land has been the supreme prize attainable by Bikinians. Without land, there is no basis for evaluating power, influence, privilege or control within their society. Without land, there is no link to the past, no vision of a future.

One plan for returning home calls for the removal of about two feet of topsoil, reforestation, the building of a village and water and electric facilities. Cost estimates for the project range between $80 million and $120 million. The Bikinians would like to be home before the year 2000. Congress is reviewing the plans.

The Bikinians are anxious. They've already returned to Bikini once, in 1968, after the Johnson administration authorized resettlement by a small contingent. For 10 years, about 100 Bikinians lived on the atoll, only to be hastily removed when it was discovered that the levels of radiation were too high for human habitation. Then, as on subsequent visits, the atoll seemed okay to the Bikinians. They couldn't feel any radiation. The coconut trees were heavy with green nuts. There were many bird eggs, many fish. One time, the Bikinians caught a large sea turtle. They brought it back with them to Kili. They couldn't taste the radiation either.

The Bikinians hate Kili for many reasons. It is too small and the waves are too big. Cans of USDA salmon are piling up along the shoreline, along with Coke bottles and Pampers and rubber thongs and trash. They can't sail for pleasure like they used to, visiting the various islands in their atoll, stopping here to gather breadfruit or manioc root, there to visit another family. On Kili, the young ones aren't learning the old ways. Instead, they are learning how to play billiards, basketball and Casio organs, how to watch videos, drive cars, listen to rock music on boom boxes.

Today, the favorite pastime on Kili is called Jumbo. Everyone does it. Children, teens, grandmothers. You give the driver of a Toyota Corolla 1 U.S. dollar. In return, you get four trips around the perimeter road, 2.5 miles each trip.

That's Jumbo.

That's life on Kili.

Riding around in circles on U.S. dollars, killing time and pain with money and things, dreaming of going home. THE TOYOTA VAN CRUNCHES CORAL THROUGH THE VILLAGE, past stop signs and speed posts (10 mph) hewn roughly from slabs of stone, past No Parking painted on houses that line the tight, winding lane.

The village was built by the Americans, an L-shaped cluster modeled after a typical community in the United States. The same design was used once before, at the first resettlement village built for the Bikinians after they were moved away from home.

That first village was on Rongerik, 150 miles east of Bikini. Though the Bikinians were used to living well apart from one another in separate family groups, they didn't object to their new accommodations on Rongerik. They did notice, immediately upon arrival in the spring of 1946, that the coconuts were smaller, that the pandanus trees were less productive and that some of the fish were poisonous, causing diarrhea or sometimes partial paralysis of the limbs.

For the first five months, after the Navy dropped them off, everything went well on Rongerik. Then supplies ran low. Then the coconut trees stopped bearing, something that never happened on Bikini. Then it was discovered that Rongerik was inhabited by a female demon named Libokra. Then, in May 1947, 30 percent of the coconut trees were destroyed in a fire of unknown origin. The people went hungry. Many fled to other islands in their sailing canoes. Chief Juda made appeals to the U.S. government for aid, and then for relocation. Finally, two years and one week after the Bikinians' arrival at Rongerik, the Americans came and took them away, again.

On Kili, the houses are jumbled along the northern coastline of the island. Mostly new or refurbished, they are built of plywood and corrugated tin and are rectangular in shape, with three rooms, garish paint jobs, brand-new linoleum tile. There is no furniture. The Bikinians prefer to sit on woven mats on the linoleum. They keep their clothes in suitcases.

The kitchens are behind the houses, rustic affairs with a basin for water, an electric toaster, a kerosene burner. The burners are used mostly for boiling water for coffee sweetened with sugar and USDA evaporated milk. Most of the food is cooked in oil in large pots over open fires. The pots rest on old metal pipes, which are balanced upon stones above the fire. Coconut husks are used for fuel. The fires burn hot, give off little smoke. The staple on Kili is frozen chicken, and that is the pervasive odor of the place, the fleshy smell of chickens set out to thaw.

Late afternoon. Sand and dust swirl in the air amid the drone of diesel generators and the odors of the chicken and babies and human sweat. Most of the people on Kili keep their windows closed so their appliances won't rust in the salty air. The smell takes some getting used to.

Jack Niedenthal is driving the van. He is 29, an American from Harrisburg, Pa., a former Peace Corps worker and teacher in the Kili school. Known hereabouts as "La Jack," he serves as the Bikinians' paid liaison to all things American. He's been in the Marshall Islands for six years, has worked with the Bikinians for three. He speaks Bikinian, a distinct Marshallese dialect. He hopes to marry a Bikinian.

La Jack and two journalists are Jumboing around the island; the van is courtesy of the village council. La Jack knows the people and the place well; he's trying to explain how they feel.

" . . . And what they keep telling me is to tell you how much they hate it here, how much they want to go home," La Jack is saying as he drives through the village.

From the moment, three days ago, that Jack arrived on Kili with the two journalists, just about everyone on the island has greeted him, shaken his hand, told him to tell the journalists that they hate it here, that they want to go home. They mean it, but it is also true that the Bikinians have gotten great, continued on page 38

over the years, at giving quotes. The photographer has trouble getting candid shots. They see a camera, they pose. They want to be helpful. They know about public relations.

La Jack is driving the speed limit, being careful to signal at each turn. The 10-man police force here writes tickets; La Jack has forgotten his driver's license. We pass a little girl fanning herself idly with a folded $10 bill. Near the schoolhouse, two boys play Rambo in the roadway. One holds a plastic machine gun, the other a driftwood sword. The kids are named George Bush Johnson and Bruce Lee Joel. They make war noises, they giggle. Nearby, a teen-ager with long hair sits in the shade of a doorway, taking bites from a hunk of Spam the way you would an apple. The tin is on the ground. A rat is nuzzling it for scraps.

We come to a high concrete wall and stop, get out of the van, climb some steps to the top. It's the graveyard. There's a nice view of the village from here, the endless stretch of ocean beyond. We stand under the deep shade of a big tree. One headstone says "Kenjah Kerong Lotak, September 29, 1962 -- October 28, 1981." La Jack says Kenjah hung himself from a tree in the jungle after his mother refused him 50 cents, the price for watching a video at a neighbor's house on Kili.

Much has changed on Kili in the last few years. The governments of the United States and the Marshall Islands have signed the Compact of Free Association, which granted autonomy to the islands. With the compact came additional trust funds for the Bikinians, the monies from which provide for capital improvements like schools, homes and roads, as well as payments of $2,100 a year to each Bikinian. And with the new money came bankers eager to lend and Marshallese men eager to marry.

After the Bikinians got the airstrip and a weekly flight in 1981, they got diesel generators, and then refrigerators, and then televisions, and then cars. They started going to Honolulu to buy perfume, watches, Hawaiian surfer shorts, T-shirts with witty sayings. They bought prefab shower stalls, but no water pumps, so to take a shower, they stand in the stall and pour a bucket of well water over their heads. They bought American-style toilets and put them in outhouses, then built wooden boxes around them so they could squat over the top. A cistern atop the outhouse catches rainwater to work the flush.

As the Bikinians acquired more things, they had more and more questions, and they came to La Jack. They wanted to know the significance of the song "I'm Proud to Be an Okie From Muskogee." The meanings of words like inflammable, fluorocarbon, mucous membrane, sodium hydroxide. The mechanics of opening a savings account. The wisdom of investing in mutual funds. The rules of baseball. The technique of jump shots and layups. The cultural origins of the Smurfs.

The van squeaks to a halt outside a refurbished house. An old man is sitting barefoot on a woven mat on the porch, his back against an upright refrigerator. La Jack sticks his head out the window of the van.

"Hey, Rubin!" he calls. "Jumbo?"

Rubin Juda looks up from a portable television. His face is dark and deeply wrinkled, and he has his fingers interlaced, resting on his belly, thumbs running circles. All the men on Kili have big bellies, and all of them have long, sharp thumbnails, good for poking into the top of green coconuts. When you poke in the right place, you find a hole, like a natural pop-top, through which you can drink the sweet, oily milk. For a fee, a couple of teen-agers will go out, climb a coconut tree, knock the nuts to the ground, weave a basket, put the nuts in the basket, hail a Toyota Corolla, put the basket in the trunk of the car. When they get to your home, they'll put the nuts in the refrigerator. They are much more refreshing when they're cold.

On the porch, Rubin has been watching a James Bond video, "Live and Let Die." He speaks no English, but he likes the action scenes. Behind him is a storeroom. There's a business license on the door. Many of the Bikinians have stores. They usually sell one or two different items at a time. Baby formula and Newport cigarettes. Almond Joy and Spam. Eveready batteries and Kotex. They call relatives in Majuro, the nearby capital of the Marshall Islands, on a shortwave radio, and on Monday, the day of the weekly flight between Majuro and Kili, the relatives put their goods on the plane. Or the Bikinians fly to Majuro and go shopping themselves. Many of them have houses on Majuro. One has a fleet of taxis. Another owns a small apartment building. If they go to Majuro, they have to stay at least a week, until the next plane, and when they get back, all their goods are inspected. By the Bikinians' own decree, no alcohol is allowed on Kili, and neither are playing cards. Most else is fine.

Rubin is the spirit shaman of the village. His specialty is exorcising demons. Though Rubin would never admit this, the other night, he lit a tree on fire in the woods to keep away the spirit of Jack's predecessor, Ralph Waltz, who is soon to die of cancer.

Waltz, also a former Peace Corps worker, has been with the Bikinians for almost 25 years. He has a Bikinian wife, and is known on Kili as "La Bako," the Shark. He got the name years ago, before the trust funds. In those days, the Bikinians were often hungry. Hunger and going without is a recurrent theme in their history of the last 40 years.

The Bikinians were brought to Kili in late 1948, after a brief sojourn at the American military base on Kwajalein, where they were taken following their problems on Rongerik.

On Kwaj, later to become the landing site for test missiles shot from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the Americans took good care of the Bikinians. They fed them heartily in a mess hall, housed them in tents, gave them work as laborers. At the time of the Bikinians' arrival, a U.S. official reported that "definite psychological scars were left on the people {after their experience at Rongerik} . . . The first month on Kwajalein was spent chiefly in restoring their health, rehabilitation of their clothing and possessions . . . and, above all, establishing a sense of security and self respect."

The money they earned on Kwaj helped a good deal toward this last goal, the official reported. "They are profoundly impressed with the cultural accomplishments of the United States -- movies, cakes, candy, ice cream."

Of course, there were none of those things on Kili. The Americans had hoped that the Bikinians would farm taro in the swamps on Kili, but like all Marshallese, like all peoples of Pacific atolls, the Bikinians don't like to farm. When you're from a place where you can fish and gather, a place where for generations people have had to do nothing more than walk into the jungle or out to the water to get something to eat, well, when you're from such an easygoing place as that, the work ethic is not what it is in the industrial world. Basically, farming is too hard, and the gratification is too long in coming. The Bikinians do have some history of work, primarily harvesting coconuts and making copra to sell to traders. But even so, the money they earned was treated as a luxury, to be spent on things like cloth. If they didn't want to work, they didn't really have to. Bikini provided everything for free.

Kili, unfortunately, was not like Bikini. Once again the supplies ran out. Once again the Bikinians went hungry. One day, despite the threatening waves, Ralph Waltz and four Bikinians set out to fish. A mile offshore, their boat's motor gave out. Two of the Bikinians swam for help. They never made it. People say they were eaten by sharks. After that, Waltz was known as the Shark.

Now La Bako is dying. Many in the village think the disease is the result of an evil spell cast on him by strangers, perhaps people jealous of the Bikinians' trust funds. Rubin won't say what he thinks. Rubin's wife is positive it's a hex. At the moment, she is around the side of the house, washing clothes. First she scrubs using a tub and a washboard. Then she goes to the well, draws water in a paint can, pours the water into a washing machine, dials in permanent press. Clean clothes are very important to the Bikinians. People in America wear clean clothes. They think they should too. Lately, the Bikinians have begun buying their clothes in Hawaii or in the department store in Majuro. Though it is hot, the Bikinian men rarely wear shorts, preferring corduroy pants, undershirts and polo shirts. The women wear long polyester dresses, always with slips. Many of the boys wear high-top sneaks, their pants tucked into their socks, a style they learned from the young American woman who teaches English in their school. The teacher is from Houston. She wears silk shirts with shoulder pads to class.

Behind Rubin, on the porch, both the refrigerator and the storeroom are padlocked. In the last few years, everyone has taken to locking everything on Kili; the most frequent adornment hereabouts is a chain of keys around the neck. This is strange for people like Bikinians. For generations, before they got to Kili, no one ever owned anything worth taking. On Bikini, food was gathered communally and apportioned in shares to the families. Tools were rough and simple and easy to make. Knives, axes and other metal things were owned by everyone, as were the sailing canoes.

Today, the Bikinians even mark their rubber thongs with little cuts or cigarette burns so nobody will take them. The locks are just a small metaphor for the kind of change the Bikinians' culture is undergoing on Kili. Much in their society is confused. They are communal primitives living the life of modern capitalists. They are hunters and gatherers with little to hunt and gather. Everywhere you look you see it: Societal rules are in a state of confused transition. The Bikinian people don't know anymore what they're supposed to do, what they're supposed to be.

When La Jack calls to him, Rubin says nothing. He checks his Seiko watch, shrugs, climbs slowly into the back of the van. He shakes hands with the two journalists, says something in Bikinian to La Jack. "He says to make sure and tell you how much they hate this place," La Jack translates.

But what about all the nice things he has? What about the refrigerators and the cars and the video players?

La Jack translates: "He says he is very happy with the things they are getting now, because before they were getting zero. You have to understand that this place was zero maybe 15 years ago; there was nothing here. They didn't have anything. These things that they're getting now, he says they're good, the money is good, he wants more things, and he wants to continue in this way for a future, better life, which is kind of a Marshallese slogan. But he says Bikini is still not clean, and that's the bottom line. He can't go home. It's like . . ."

Rubin interrupts La Jack, says something else.

"He would like to say, well, just the tremendous amount of pain. He wants to express the pain that they were put through, from the time they were moved from place to place to finally wind up here. He said he doesn't know how to really express the depth of this pain. He just doesn't think too many people could understand it."

La Jack is quiet for a minute. All of a sudden, Rubin laughs. He says something to La Jack. La Jack laughs.

"He says to tell you that this place is like a wife you can't stand. But to make it easier on you, you buy her a nice dress and some nice earrings to make her look good."

Everybody laughs.

"Jumbo?" asks Rubin.

"Jumbo," replies La Jack.

The van moves out of the village going east, then south, then west, then north, through the village. One circuit, 2.5 miles. Again. Again.

The third time around, near the indoor/outdoor Olympic-size basketball court (where the young men meet every day at 4 to play three on three), and the baseball diamond (the home field for Paradise Lost, the Bikinian softball team), Jack slows the van, stops.

"How you doing, Willie Boy?" asks La Jack.

"What's happenin'?" says William Andrews, 19.

"Yakway," say the journalists, the traditional Bikinian greeting.

"Jumbo?" asks Willie Boy.

Willie Boy is half Marshallese and half Palauan, more worldly than a Bikinian. He is married to Ruth Leviticus, daughter of Jeremiah. He speaks English, and English slang, and he wants to go to college in the United States. There are currently 40 Bikinian students in high schools and colleges around America.

Life to Willie Boy is nice but boring on Kili. Ruth is pretty, and he's had the time to get good on the Casio organ. Sometimes he fishes with a rod and reel, using tinned sardines for bait. Lately, he's been spending a lot of time laying linoleum floors for Ruth's relatives. Soon, he and Ruth will probably have some babies. Kili is a great place for making babies, and Bikinians are doing so at a very high rate.

We approach the village again. "Anybody want a candy bar?" asks La Jack.

Why not?

He stops, calls over a few kids. "Hey, where are the candy bars these days?" he asks in Bikinian.

"What kind you want?" asks a boy.

"What's around?" asks La Jack.

"Snickers."

"How about Kit Kats?"

"They have some over at Roger's house," chimes a girl.

"What about Almond Joys?"

"I don't know where they are," says the boy. The girl shrugs her shoulders.

"Get us some Kit Kats," says La Jack. "How much?"

"Fifty cents."

La Jack hands over the money for five, the boy disappears into the village. The Kit Kats arrive, and La Jack heads out of the village, east, south, west, north, 2.5 miles. Rubin gets out. Around again, then again. We trail one Toyota Corolla. We pass a few others going the opposite direction.

There is great commotion at the infirmary, near the basketball court. Adults and children crowd the doorways and windows, trying to see inside. Others huddle in groups. Women are gesturing wildly.

Inside, a 13-year-old girl has a severe head wound. Her scalp is a flap of skin laid open to the skull. Jeremiah Leviticus, the Bikinians' paramedic, is preparing to suture. Blood drips to the floor. In another room are two boys. They have huge swollen bumps on their heads. Women cry. Other women knead the boys' arms and legs, hands and feet. An old lady, very short, with short arms, long gray hair, warts all over her face, alternates attention between the boys, sprinkling them with juice from the pulp of a pandanus tree trunk. A second girl is in another room. She had a dislocated elbow, but one of the men has put it back in place.

Outside on the porch, Willie Boy smokes cigarettes with the other young men. He has a very serious expression on his face. This is it. The first auto accident with casualties on Kili. The very first. Willie Boy knows it won't be the last. Behind him, children play excitedly. One of them is a boy named Diem. He's buck-toothed, smiles all the time. He likes to run around with one hand in the air. He watches the hand as he runs, watches as if it's a bird. He also likes to watch the adults. He'll sit on the ground a distance away and watch everything. Sometimes he talks. Always he looks happy.

Willie Boy has the story on the accident. The four injured kids, all of them around 13 years old, had hailed a Toyota Corolla after school. They got in, and each gave the driver a dollar bill. A late-afternoon Jumbo.

They went around once. Then again. The third time around, the car hit a stone, veered left, plowed headfirst into the stump of a coconut tree. The car was totaled. The driver is hiding in the woods. One of the girls' fathers is after him. Some say he took a gun.

Meanwhile, on the porch at the infirmary on Kili, everyone smokes. Some pace. The two journalists are quiet. One of them thinks of a meeting he had, way back in Washington, D.C.

At the time, Rick Montoya was the assistant secretary for territorial and international affairs at the Department of the Interior. He said he'd like to see the Bikinians return to Bikini, and that the government was working with them toward that goal. No so long before, he had visited Kili. He said he had two main impressions:

"My initial reaction was how in the world did they find this place. Because we flew for hours, and then finally, out of nowhere, here's this rock . . .

"Another thing I've noticed is that the Bikinians have their act together. They know what they want, they know how they want to go about getting it. And they've got good leadership . . . You look at the Bikinians, and they've been provided for extremely well, but they've also been able to leverage what they've been given, they've really handled their money well. You go to Kili, and it's just a well-run community. There's a lot of enthusiasm on the part of the Bikinians about going back to Bikini, and they're just a delight to work with . . ."

On the porch at the infirmary, the women are serving coffee and powdered lemonade and English tea biscuits. The excitement has dimmed a bit. Everyone sits, waits. After a while, the boy Diem comes to the porch. He sits on the floor a distance from Willie Boy and one of the journalists. He watches. He smiles. After a while he scoots over, tugs at the leg of Willie Boy's pants, says something.

Willie Boy translates.

"He says to tell you this wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the American cars." ::